This study examines the potential of community schools to revolutionize the educational landscape by creating a more impactful and locally tailored ecosystem. Through Action Research methodology, the research explores how deep community engagement can reshape educational experiences, focusing on the Flexible Pathways Initiative that empowers…

Full-service community schools are increasingly adopted as educational policy nationwide to transform educational institutions into community hubs, addressing racial and social disparities and countering deficit narratives related to marginalized youth and families. As the movement toward community schooling as an educational policy gains…

This study highlights the Community Schools (CS) implementation experience of five rural Vermont schools. Principals and CS coordinators participating in a state-funded program aimed at CS establishment were interviewed to understand better their experience with implementing a school/district-wide policy and reform effort. Findings suggest several…

The COVID-19 pandemic set higher education institutions on an unprecedented path requiring of them to identify alternative strategies and implement various initiatives to sustain their academic projects. With the widespread devastation of the pandemic, the purpose of universities within their communities were again in the spotlight. A sensibility…

Community colleges play a vital role in providing access to higher educational opportunities for their communities. College completion rates for community colleges, however, have been historically low and few students graduate within a two-year timeframe. Disaggregating these data also reveals significant equity gaps in these outcomes for many…

Professionalism in the context of public sector professions is a changing concept, which is subject to different interpretations. The sociologist Julia Evetts has developed two models, occupational and organisational professionalism, which are useful conceptual tools which help us to understand from a wider theoretical perspective the changing…

The author's previous articles for "FORUM," some co-authored with Dr. Andrew Allen, propose a radical restructuring of English schooling to enable more effective engagement with the community and a reassessment of the purposes of schooling. What follow here are a few suggestions that individual schools and academy trusts might take up to…

This article considers recent trends in developmental education and analyzes disaggregated student data, exploring the extent to which developmental education reform of corequisite instruction affected access of one community college's students to a first-semester composition course. By examining student access and student success across two…

AB705 is a landmark higher education policy that has changed approaches to developmental/remedial education in the California Community College system. We study one district that implemented reforms by placing most students in transfer-level math/English courses and encouraging enrollment in support courses based on multiple measures of academic…

Newark, New Jersey has been at the forefront of school reform from the civil rights era through more recent efforts to resist neoliberal school reform approaches during the 2010s. Drawing on interviews with activists, policymakers, and school reformers, this paper documents the history of community organizing as a strategy to improve conditions in…

Urban minoritized students often face a multitude of systemic challenges that play out in their statistical outcomes. Still, they are also surrounded by cultural, family, and community resources, supports, and funds of knowledge. In this manuscript, we present a methodology for a community-engaged process to urban educational ecosystems as a first…

This Projects With Promise case study offers insights for addressing tensions between universities and communities in building partnerships and collectively rethinking "the field" of community engagement. We explore moving beyond a solely place-based understanding of "the field" into an ethos based on human interactions and…

A number of urban U.S. cities that were traditionally Black and underinvested are now becoming enclaves to whites and upper-middle-class people. Consequently, a growing body of research on schools and gentrification is emerging. While most of this research has focused on the shifts that neighborhoods and schools undergo due to gentrification, we…

A growing number of colleges and universities have come to recognize the role and responsibilities they have in the economic and social fabric of their surrounding communities and regions as anchor institutions. Yet, the conditions of urban communities surrounding even the most engaged universities--including under-resourced public schools,…

Young people who are either at risk of disengaging or disengaged from mainstream education in Ireland are often supported by what is termed 'out-of-school' or the 'alternative education' sector. A recent review of out-of-school education provision (Department of Education. 2022. "Review of Out-of-School Educational Provision." Dublin:…